


Unspeakable

by Paranormal_Shitness



Series: Riddle’s Wisely Expounded [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alphard is suffering from a Precocious Puberty and Tom’s not ready for what that entails, Art, Choking, Fan Art, Hypnosis, Implied Use of Date Rape Drugs, Intercrural Sex, Light D/s Dynamics, M/M, Oh how the turn tables, Sexual Experimentation, Size Difference, Underage - Freeform, Underage Drinking, dub-con, incest mentions, thigh fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24576331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paranormal_Shitness/pseuds/Paranormal_Shitness
Summary: (Of the Oscar Wilde Sort)Tom Riddle runs a tutoring program because it allows him control over younger students. Alphard Black is a baby thot with terrible grades who’s older sister has a crush on Tom. You do the math.In which Tom Riddle thinks of Alphard Black as prey but Alphard Black thinks of Tom Riddle as a snack ;>
Relationships: Illusions to Alphard’s massive crush on Orion, Lucretia Black/Ignatius Prewett, Onesided! Walburga Black/Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle/Abraxas Malfoy, Tom Riddle/Alphard Black
Series: Riddle’s Wisely Expounded [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776358
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, I’m working sans beta so please be forgiving. This has been proofread a total of one (1) times by myself and myself alone. Thank you for taking the time to read this rare pair I found because apparently Tombrax is not rare enough for my exquisitely underground taste /sarcasm/
> 
> This is set during Tom’s fifth year, which is also Alphard’s first but being a member of the Noble and Honorable House of Black (imco) means suffering some sexual trauma early on and generally responding to it with robust hyper sexuality, a situation that is basically the opposite of Tom’s exp. Funny how that equation results in an answer which is just what Tom needs but doesn’t know how to demand.
> 
> May update if the inspiration strikes.

It was true that there were many moments, alone with Tom Riddle, in which Alphard Black began to have truly silly thoughts. This was a common enough occurrence, being that Riddle had been in position to tutor him on his weaker subjects for nearly six months now. But that failed to make it any less distressing. Because it was distressing. Deeply so.

Of all the time Alphard had been at school, which was almost a year now- nearly- and what an eventful year it had been, he had not met a single boy more elusive to description than plain and average muggleborn Tom Riddle. By basic description, one would never think anything of him. A lanky young man with something of a willowy stature, dark hair and dark eyes on a complexion that, while it could not be described as dark, was not fair either. He was a lonesome character, commonly surrounded by a group of friends, many of them girls, but almost always seeming to be off in his own world even as he stood in their midst. A boy who maintained a tired set of bags under his eyes, which whispered quiet rumors of a severe lack of sleep. 

But even in and despite all of this, Riddle was charming. A Prefect. Some even said he had a shoe in for Head Boy. And he had an impressive resume for it too. It was due to this resume, and the fact that Riddle was so courteously close to his own elder sister, that Alphard had ended up in the boy’s capable hands. Because he came on a recommendation, see? And that recommendation came from only the most discerning of women. One who obviously had a fancy for Riddle if her doggedness to be under his arm at any party were to be relied on as a positive signal. 

Alphard did think down on her for that. Sneaking beneath her station even as her own fiancé watched. Poor Orion.

“Here we carry the three,” Riddle said studiously. He was always studious. Serious to a fault. Alphard doubted he’d ever seen the other boy laugh in all the time he’d known him. Then again, they did only ever really meet in these circumstances. Perhaps Riddle was known to have fun in others. 

“How do you carry it?” Alphard asked, “Over the shoulder or bridal style?”

Riddle gave him the ghost of a smirk, one that crinkled up about the eyes without touching his lips. “Just up to the top here,” the boy explained, pointing with the tip of his quill at the number in the tow’s place on top of the equation. “It’s decided it’s a bit of a polygamist and it wants to join in their marriage,” he added, making a little motion up and down the vertical column of numbers.

Alphard laughed. Riddle was funny. Once, Walburga had told him that Riddle, who was in her year but only older than her, had given a presentation on the witch burnings for history class where in he’d jokingly claimed that actually getting burned was quite fine, if you knew well enough, and some had even signed up for trial like it was a sport, pulling the most dastardly and outrageous pranks on muggles for the sole purpose of getting caught. This satire piece had gotten a good laugh from the students in class while failing to ruffle the tired old teacher who presided over the fifth year Slytherins’ historical education. Asleep on his desk for the duration os Riddle’s speech, Mr Binns had given Riddle an Outstanding.

“So tell me what do a three and an eight make when they join hands in holy bigamony?” Riddle asked.

“I don’t know,” Alphard said, throwing his hands up to shoulder height as if to brush the question off in a literal sense. 

“You don’t know or you don’t want to think about it?” Riddle pressed.

“I don’t know,” Alphard insisted plainly.

To this, Riddle sighed deeply. “It’s eleven,” he said, grabbing hold of Alphard’s wrists one in each of his hands, and they were strong hands, big hands, the kind of hands that seemed to make an ocean around his own, flow over the edges of his wrists, over the heals and down the knuckles, fingers gripping gently as he held Alphard’s hands up for him, manipulating them so they counted out eight. “See?” He said. “Now what happens if you add three fingers?”

“I run out of fingers,” Alphard told him.

The breath went out of the room as Riddle inhaled sharply over the rounds of his teeth. The older boy closed his eyes. He worked his jaw for a moment and then he stood up. “I’m getting myself something to drink,” he announced. 

This pulled the warmth from Alphard’s wrists, leaving them to feel delicate and exposed without those hands wrapped around them. Idly, he wondered down at them, at the sheer difference in size between his hands and Riddle’s hands. Even his own sister’s hands had seemed bigger in comparison to Riddles on the few occasions Alphard had been lucky enough to have the displeasure of catching them in the same room. 

Walburga liked to boast. She would say the most outrageous things, things one would never believe of her, only then to back up those words with her actions. Oh how she hung on Riddle. And oh how that reminded Alphard of all the things she claimed Riddle had done to her. That she’d let him do. Alphard doubted it. He lived to doubt it. It was out of her rights to be fooling about with a boy who wasn’t her intended when her intended was already so nicely picked out. 

And then Riddle had returned, a glass in each of his hands, one, which he offered to Alphard, clearly just water, and the other, which he kept for himself, some sort of fruit juice from what Alphard could gather.

“What’s that?” Alphard asked. 

Riddle stopped short mid sip to level him with a nearly reproachful look. His face was very animated. “You wouldn’t like it,” he said.

“And why shouldn’t I?” Alphard demanded. “How would you know what I do and do not like?”

“Your mother would be upset if she learned I gave it to you,” Riddle explained.

“My mother hasn’t cared to know anything about my whereabouts or occupations since she sent me to live in London with Orion,” Alphard argued.

“Oh she doesn’t now?” Riddle needled.

“No,” Alphard said staunchly. She did not care and he was proud of this. “I don’t think she’s ever cared about anything in her life.”

“Not even her eldest son?” Riddle asked.

“Not. Even,” Alphard told him, and he wasn’t lying but he was boasting. The truth was his mother hardly ever got out of bed these days and was much more preoccupied with finding constellations in the wallpaper than anything to do with her own children. 

Riddle thought on this for a moment. “Fine,” he said, “but you can’t tell anyone.”

And it was then, Alphard became intimately aware that what Riddle, the Prefect, perfect Prefect Riddle, was about to give him, was some sort of alcohol. This thought made him very giddy indeed as Riddle passed the glass to him.

He sniffed it cautiously, sure it would taste horrid. He’d always been told alcohol burned to drink. Even Walburga said it. She said he’d feel his throat was being cauterized which sounded the opposite of pleasant. In fact it sounded dreadful. But it did not smell dreadful. Instead it smelled of soft sweetness. 

“Is it pear juice?” Alphard asked.

“Elderflower,” Riddle told him. “Drink it.”

And so Alphard did. But it was not horrid in the least. The burn was a warmth and it was every bit as sweet as the scent had promised him it would be.

“Do you like it?” Riddle asked needlessly as Alphard was sure his eyes had lit up.

He nodded emphatically, still keeping the liquid on his tongue for a moment, just to experience it, before he swallowed. “It’s delicious,” he assured the other boy. “I do wish I could have my own.”

“Well if your mother doesn’t care,” Riddle said. “Why not?” And he went back across the room to fetch Alphard his own drink. A proper drink.

It would be their little secret. Alphard did love a secret. He thought nothing in the world could be more romantic than a secret and now he had one with Riddle and his sister didn’t. Riddle wasn’t the kind to get up to mischief with frivolous and silly girls after all. He was too serious for that. He only did mischief with boys.

The cup Riddle handed him was a touch sweeter, a touch thinner in texture and Alphard wondered if perhaps Riddle had added a syrup, but he had no reason to complain. It tasted every bit as good, if not even a bit better, less acrid, than the sip he’d had from the other cup.

“Now try to try for me,” the older boy told him, even as a distinct tingling feeling began to bloom over Alphard’s cheeks.

They went back to doing maths. Alphard hated maths. It was a stupid pursuit with no real baring on reality. Counting was the worst part. Counting up and down and by small increments for useless equations. He was almost determined not to learn it. It was a determination that inspired him to feel a small bit of pity for Riddle who’s very job it was to run all around making him learned all while he had no desire for it. In that way Riddle certainly did dance for him. And wouldn’t it be that much fancier, he thought, if dancing were the entertainment Riddle provided him instead of maths tutoring. He was a fine dancer if the previous winter’s Yule Ball had anything to say on the matter, which it did.

They finished off two more of the little equations before Riddle turned to him and asked if he would ever intend to pull his weight even once in his life which was of course offensive. Of course Alphard meant never to pull his own weight. It would simply be garish if he made an attempt.

And so he said, in very well pronounced language, “Why would I when I’ve got you to do it for me?”

These words were potentially a mistake Alphard realized only after he had said them because Riddle’s eyes did a fascinating thing then, flashing dangerously as he turned his head away. There was a moment of silence in which Alphard hoped he had not crossed some boundary with the other boy but as quickly as his hackles had raised, Riddle smoothed them back out and in very good nature he said, “I won’t always be there to do the lifting for you, you know.”

“Well that’s not very romantic,” Alphard said, mock reproach coloring his tongue so the words came out speckled with it.

“I’m afraid that if you’re looking for romance in me, you’ll be sorely disappointed,” Riddle said.

To which Alphard asked, all chipper tones, “Like Burgie?”

And there it was. Tom Riddle actually laughed. He had a pleasant laugh, a bit roughish, and Alphard delighted in watching him tuck down his chin, almost as though he were shy to do it where someone might see him. What a gentleman he could have been if born more properly. What a diamond in the rough he was. That’s what Alphard thought. He thought he would certainly like to be Tom Riddle, or, if not to be him, perhaps he would like to look like him. Despite anything he said, he did have a very romantic face. One with high, French cheekbones and almond shaped eyes that did an honest lot of good by his soft nose. 

“Yes,” Riddle admitted once he’d sobered a bit, smile still curling his lips, “Like Burgie.”

And wasn’t that a delight to hear? Wasn’t that a reassurance? 

Alphard actually did pull his weight on the next problem but by this point, his face felt as though it had turned to velvet it was just so fuzzy and so he kept getting distracted and smearing himself with ink instead of managing to put down the next number.

Riddle, charming as he was, seemed to find his state quite amusing. “Are you alright?” He asked, around another laugh.

To which Alphard replied, “Well why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve just given yourself a black eye,” Riddle explained, still viciously amused. And his amusement was catching. 

Alphard picked it up as a vicarious amusement and smiled at him. “I’m fine as long as I never have to do another maths problem again,” he announced. 

“Oh but you have to,” Riddle said. His words were so heavy. They carried such weight. Alphard watched his mouth as he spoke, watched his lips carefully form every word, watched his tongue peak devilishly from behind them, watched his teeth flash in those moments of caught light. “You have to do everything I say,” Riddle told him and the order in his voice hit the still waters of Alphard’s mind, sinking like a large stone.

Enveloped. Enveloped it sank. So heavy. Like an anchor dragging Alphard with it. Dragging him  
D  
O  
W  
N  
He landed there, on the bottom, comfortably ensconced in Riddle’s voice, that strange quality it had of being not one place but two, not one voice, but four, speaking in a resonant chorus. 

“Put your quill down,” Riddle told him and so he did.

Somewhere distant, his hand laid against the table, lazily draped over the round of the quill where he’d dropped it, leaking ink out over his assignment but he was presently distracted by how far he was from that image, the sound of Riddle’s voice pushing him and pulling him in all sorts of directions.

“Turn to me,” Riddle said and here Alphard started to wonder if he was even present enough to follow this command or if he had ignored it completely but soon enough there was the feeling of Riddle’s hand wrapped around his chin, and his mind was suddenly so preoccupied with the memory of Riddle telling him that Walburga was a silly thing. A desperate thing.

He did not need to be told to open his mouth. The feeling of Riddle’s thumb, thick and invasive, slipping in over his tongue, the ghost of the flavor of salt on it’s pad as it swept across his tastebuds, raked through their consecutive rows, pressed hard on its center, forcing him to slacken his jaw even further. Alphard closed his eyes, relaxed himself as Riddle reached in deeper, pushing against the outlines of his tonsils, feeling his way into the front of Alphard’s throat.

Somehow, this action, this relaxation, felt intuitive. Like the culmination of some great fantasy he’d always had, to have a boy open his mouth and prod around its insides with his fingers. The feeling of the intrusion was enough to curl his toes in his shoes, and tighten his legs against each other like sometimes happened when he watched Burgie sat in private intimations with Uncle Venius. How he’d longed to take her place, to feel those affections across his skin. 

Riddle reached into him with fingers like matches and struck them repeatedly against the soft parts of him, sending spark after spark down his throat until he’d ignited a fire that rolled deep in the confines of Alphard’s stomach. And he did so with blackening eyes, quickening breath, all the proper signs. Signs Alphard could recognize through the sheer curtains of his eyelashes as he covertly watched the other boy go about his exploration, afraid the act of openly observing this experiment might cut it short. And then Riddle’s fingers retreated from Alphard’s mouth, leaving him open and wanting as they trailed down his chin, Riddle’s free hand continuing to manipulate his head, stretching out a runway of throat which he could parade them across it, paving the way with the slick of Alphard’s own spit.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised as the tips of his fingers crested the rise of Alphard’s collar bone but Alphard already knew this. He trusted Tom Riddle. Almost implicitly. Nearly as much as he trusted Orion. Perhaps even more when it came to certain specific topics. Which was funny if he thought about it because Riddle did look a good deal like his cousin if he squinted, which now he was and that could be a reason to trust the boy in itself. 

But he said none of this because he did not have the chance, for at that moment, Riddle’s hand snaked suddenly upward in a movement so viciously quick it was hard for Alphard to comprehend it until he attempted to swallow once or twice and came to the conclusion that Riddle was indeed choking him, that that hand had wrapped in tight around his throat, fingers long enough to meet at the tips just below his hairline in the back, and was now beginning to squeeze, very gently, across his trachea. 

Cut off from airflow, the little fire inside him began to smolder, feeding on its own heat. Instinctively, he squeezed his knees together, knocking them against Riddle’s as Riddle was quite a bit closer now, balanced on the edge of his own seat, practically looming over Alphard. And the elder boy’s eyes were black now. Oddly black, as though the pupils of them were slightly misshapen. Alphard watched as Riddle’s lips drew up back off his teeth like a hungry cat’s yet he felt no fear, even as the beating of his heart seemed to well up into his ears, a chorus of war drums, and his face began to grow hot. Even as he struggled to breathe. Now he sat staring with both eyes fully open but he felt no fear and Riddle seemed to feel no shame. If Alphard cast his eyes down now, he could see it, partially obscured beneath the folds of his robe. Sweet confirmation. 

Walburga really was a silly girl, he thought as his vision began to narrow and just then Riddle’s hands let up, allowing him a huge gasp of cold air which met the fire in his stomach the same way it would a fire sitting smoldering in a sealed room. Instantly, and without prompting, Alphard fumbled forward, hands searching Riddle’s lap for his prize, not difficult at all to find, even in his haste, hot even through the layers of clothing that concealed it. 

Riddle hissed, a guttural and inhuman noise, rolled like a hard ‘r’ through his teeth as his hands both fisted in Alphard’s hair. This, strangely, Alphard did not find a deterrent at all. Instead, it felt more like a reward. He now held power in his hand. Power over Riddle at least, who was now looking at him as though the tables had been inexplicably turned. So Alphard squeezed, not hard, just enough, just as much as he might ever squeeze himself even if he had the need to hold a particularly persistent pee. This had the pleasant effect of making Riddle’s face both slacken and spasm at once as he fought to find control over the situation again.

Riddle no longer knew what they were doing. This had gone too far. 

“Al-“ he began, making an attempt to push back against this new development because, clearly he had been thrown out of his depth. Clearly, he wished to withdraw. But Alphard did know. He’s seen plenary of times enough. He’d watched things he was never supposed to.

Again he squeezed, just hard enough to slacken Riddle’s grip, cut off his train of thought, render him dumb, so that silver tongue of his fumbled and all that came out of the rest of Alphard’s name was another hiss, this one reverberating through his bones, making his whole body seem to shake. And in that moment, Alphard bought his chance to slip free, to half fall from his chair, kneeling before the other boy.

“What are you doing?” Riddle asked him as he fumbled with the other boys clothes.

And so in an attempt to reassure him, Alphard replied, “I’ve seen Burgie do it.”

Still, Riddle’s legs both tightened into hard lines on either side of his shoulders, and the boy’s breath came shallow. Especially once Alphard had successfully wrestled all the clothing out of his way and found himself finally face to face with his prize. Heavy already, dampened by its own excitement. Riddle hid his face in his hand, refused to look now on the scene before him, too shy, too unbalanced. It was almost cute in a way. Now he sat powerless at Alphard’s mercy, unsure of what even to do with his own hands. 

His bottom jaw quivered gently but he gave no more protest as Alphard leaned back down and pressed a kiss against it. Instantly, the steel of Riddle’s legs shivered and he rolled his lips together, half swallowing a sound that might have otherwise been a grunt or a gasp. This, Alphard took as a good sign and yet suddenly now, he felt perhaps he had gone too far even for his own knowledge. A thought that he, naturally, refused to accept because it was now finally his turn to tutor Riddle.

Instead he pressed another kiss against the hot skin and rubbed along the shaft with his thumbs as Riddle had rubbed against his tongue, in small, coaxing circles which he was sure were not enough but certainly got Riddle’s breath up the way it sometimes got up while he faced an evenly matched foe in a mock duel. Like that day Alphard had watched him go against Orion and they’d ended in a draw because they weren’t allowed to use the more effective spells they knew. That had been a spectacle Alphard had reflected on often. He remembered the way little pearls of sweat had caught the light as it dripped from their disheveled hair, how both of them had needed to tug down their neckties and shuck their outer robes so they faced off in shirt sleeves. They both looked so good in shirt sleeves. Similar to how Uncle Venius looked when Walburga sat before him like this and tilted her head so her jaw went slack.

Alphard tried to mimic this, watching Riddle intently for his reaction as he worked his lips down over the other boys glans. Suddenly more aware of his environment than he ever felt during tutoring, he noted the fingers of Riddle’s left hand curling against the wood of his chair arm as the fingers of his right tightened further into his fringe, pulling his perfect hair into disorder. But this was not all he noticed. He also noticed the taste was different than what he’d expected. Salty and acrid, almost acidic, not that he minded when the experimental passage of his tongue got him a little moan, one Riddle instantly moved to stifle by slamming his left hand down over his mouth.

So he did it again, painfully aware still, of the heat still rising in his own body, fed even further by the heat of Riddle’s rolling down his throat, working his mouth open wider, stretching his jaw. Riddle hissed as teeth met skin but he did not pull away. Instead his toes curled in his boots and the hand over his mouth balled into a fist before slamming back down on the chair arm. Alphard froze, unsure how to categorize this reaction until Riddle’s hand fumbled off the arm of the chair, into his hair and pulled him in further.

“Don’t stop,” the other boy said, somehow able to summon the same commanding tone he’d used when he first began to issue orders. 

So Alphard listened, pushing himself further, gagging as he tried his best to swallow the saliva pooling in the back of his throat which mixed with the foreign taste of Riddle as it slid down his throat and sizzled against the fire in his belly. 

“I m-“ Riddle tried to say as Alphard used his hands to cover all that he couldn’t swallow and work against it. “I-“ he stuttered as Alphard moaned around him, sending him into another round of full body shivers. 

“I need-“ he babbled, still pulling hard at Alphard’s hair, legs shaking on his either side.

Alphard swallowed again and gave a tentative suck, sending the other boy almost scrambling, boots sliding against the stone floor. 

Riddle said “Fuck,” like Alphard had never heard anyone say the word ‘fuck’ before. Like a prayer. So Alphard smiled, offered the other boy another moan and did it again. 

This was all it took to break Riddle’s resolve, remind him what he was born to do. Just like any other man, it was instinct. Riddle’s grip on Alphard’s hair tightened and his hips lifted up off the seat of the chair, pumping quickly into Alphard’s mouth. It felt as though the tables had turned again. For a moment, Alphard floundered as he tried to keep his control, but he quickly gave in, did his best to relax, when he realized all that would get him was choked as Riddle fucked his face. 

The other boy made a guttural noise as Alphard choked and spluttered around him. He took his hand away from his face, gripping hard against the chair, curling over Alphard as he pulled the other boy deeper against himself.

It was getting hard to breathe again. The sheer size of the intrusion that had now pushed its way uncomfortably into his throat was enough to cut off his air. He spluttered as Riddle stopped there for a moment, staring down at him, then he brought his free hand up under Alphard’s chin and felt along the line of his throat, groaning as he went.

“I can feel myself,” he said, voice mesmerized.

He wasn’t the only one, thought Alphard, who could now feel himself becoming very uncomfortable. He had a dampness of his own growing in his pants, which had become very confining at some point in a way he couldn’t quite alleviate. 

“Oh fuck,” Riddle said again as he started to regain his pace, holding Alphard’s head steady. 

Riddle was simple to read, Alphard thought, but just then Riddle’s free hand wrapped back around his throat, squeezing himself off while he pressed even deeper into the confines of Alphard’s throat, which Alphard never would have predicted. He had the thought, ‘certainly this is it,’ but the context of what it meant eluded him. He did not feel afraid. Riddle would not hurt him. No matter what, Riddle would never hurt him. Riddle was a kind soul. The sort that just needed a little extra care, a few more kisses. These should be kisses enough, he thought. Riddle should be more than satisfied. 

Alphard let go. He let the world shrink in, let spots swim up in his vision, unsure if the vibration he felt was his own body over clocking from the lack of oxygen or the exertion of the muscles in Tom’s legs on either side of his head. And somewhere, distantly, beyond the rushing in his ears, he heard it, something between a hiss and a shout as Riddle emptied as deep into him as he could.

What happened next might have been anything. Alphard had the vague memory of Riddle looking down at him with an unreadable expression and feeling very happy about it all, but the next thing he knew was that he was in the Hospital wing, Orion asleep against the edge of his bed, fire still burning in his guts.


	2. Chapter 2

Finals started the very day Alphard was released from the hospital wing and thereby, only naturally, everyone fell in with their own classes and stopped minding most things around them. And worse even still, it wasn’t long after this that the girl died. 

No one really knew who she was. Sort of a piggy little muggleborn girl from Ravenclaw. She was two years ahead of him, and if he knew anything correctly had been friends with the president of the Gobstones club. People were just beside themselves over it though. ‘Imagine’, they were all saying, ‘a girl dead at Hogwarts.’ Alphard found it hard not to imagine from the stories his father had told him about the old castle but he knew better than to espouse such opinions.

Riddle did take it particularly hard though. Alphard heard it from Walburga he’d been tutoring the girl and was thereby thinking of canceling all further tutoring services.

“He’s taken it quite hard,” Walburga explained as they sat to lunch on the lawn one day. 

“Abysmally really,” Druella chimed in from behind a gloved hand as she chewed her way through a meat pudding. 

“Poor thing doesn’t really have a constitution for violence,” Walburga continued.

This made Orion laugh. Not a nice sort of laugh but a mean spirited one, the kind someone tried to hide because it was unbecoming but could not help in the face of their amusement. Yet Alphard did not find this alarming or offensive at all. Orion wasn’t laughing at Riddle. He was laughing at Burgie.

“Doesn’t really have the constitution,” Orion parroted. “Oh Burga please. I’ve dueled Riddle more than once and I can tell you he’s got the constitution for quite a lot.”

“And what does that mean?” Walburga demanded, instantly backed up by Druella, ever on her side.

It meant Orion had seen something. Something Alphard would not be surprised someone might have seen in Riddle. It was something he’d seen in creatures as far ranging in station as a large rat and his own father. 

“I mean if you set consequences aside, Riddle would be sure to surprise you,” Orion explained diplomatically. But what he meant was that in the heat of a fight, there was something that could be seen in Riddle about the eyes and the spine. A deeply engrained desire to conquer. Orion would understand that because it was something the two of them had in common. Alphard understood it because he’d had to learn to keep out of that instinct’s way early in his life. 

“And how would he do that?” Walburga pressed.

Orion lifted his eyebrows and took a bite of a finger sandwich he’d nabbed from inside but he didn’t say anything further.

“I’m not sure what it is I’ll do then,” Alphard cut in, eager for his own chance to complain. “It’s certain that without Riddle’s guiding hand, I’m to fail my finals. You don’t think they should hold me back a year do you?”

Walburga and Druella both shrugged at him.

“I’ve never heard of them doing that,” Orion said. “Not to anyone in our family.”

Here, they all sat with their lips drawn, looking at nothing but each other while Druella tried to parse out this silent communication, unable to hear the unspoken ‘yet’ Orion had left hanging on the air.

“Pass me a cucumber sandwich, Rion,” Burgie said then and Alphard watched as the little plate was leveraged toward her. “Ta.”

“What subjects is it you’re worried about?” Orion asked then. “Perhaps I could help you?”

“Only if you could help with all of them,” Alphard said. 

“It’s not that he can’t do it,” Walburga cut in. “It’s that he doesn’t want to. He’s not applying himself.”

This, Alphard deeply resented hearing all the time. “If I were to apply myself,” he began, putting a heavy emphasis on the word apply so Walburga knew exactly how ridiculous she sounded, “what good, really, would it do me? Father starts talking me up a prodigy? I inherit his stuffy old business? I invest in stocks? Of all the horrible things in this world Burgie, Stocks?”

“Well it would be good for you. Be good for the family,” she said but she meant ‘good for the family coffers’.

“Let Orion invest in the stocks,” Alphard cried, throwing himself back so he sprawled dramatically across the picnic blanket. “Leave me out of it. Let me stay home and think of silly things that actually matter.”

Orion offered him a good humored smile. “You shouldn’t really have to finish school,” he said. 

“I know.”

“Just treat it as time to get to know everyone. Establishing connections is just as important, if not more so, than education in securing a good future. Especially for us,” he continued.

“Under normal circumstances,” Walburga cut in.

Druella took a sip of her pumpkin juice and gazed idly over the lawn, half way to ignoring them as they all three of them fell into a tense lull. “Why there he is!” She said suddenly just as Alphard had become truly interested in a cloud that looked like a large boot drifting above him.

Together, they all turned, squinting into the noon sun, holding their hands over their eyes until they saw Riddle picking his way across the lawn through the picnickers. 

“Good day?” He asked, drawing up beside their picnic blanket.

“Fine enough now you’re here,” Druella told him, and immediately Walburga followed her up with a curt, “Sit.”

So Riddle did, taking his hat off. And setting it on his knee. 

“Cucumber sandwich?” Walburga asked, offering him the plate and he took one with a small smile and an offer of thanks. 

“I was just coming by to tell you,” he said then, eyes trained firmly on Orion, “They’ve suspended our end of year matches.”

“All of them?” Orion asked, horror apparent on his face.

“I’m afraid so,” Riddle agreed. 

“And over a muggleborn,” Orion said, then, clearly thinking better of it, added a quick, “No offense.”

“None taken,” Riddle replied. 

Which was when Walburga cut in saying, “Riddle’s no muggleborn. He’s a bastard. And he could well be one of ours from the look of him. You ought to show a bit more respect Orion.”

Judging by the crinkle of Orion’s nose at this suggestion, he would not be pleased if Riddle were a lost family member. 

“I don’t think that’s really something he ought to worry about,” Riddle told her. “I’ve been looking into my own genealogy and I’m almost entirely certain my family line hasn’t had even a touch of Black heritage for the past ten generations at least.”

Around them, the wind caught gayly on the branches of trees and birds twittered in between the chatter of their fellow classmates.

“You’ve found your family?” Druella asked.

“Of course he has,” Alphard said. “Riddle can find anything.”

Orion pursed his lips and glared at the grass, his fingers working to twist and pull it free of the roots it’d threaded into the ground. Riddle finished his cucumber sandwich. 

“Anyway,” he said. “That’s all I came to tell you.” Then, standing, he added, “Oh, and Alphard; I’m sorry about the tutoring.”

So Alphard pushed himself back up to sitting in order to offer the boy a more effective smile. “Why should you be sorry?” he asked. 

It got him a smile in return and a short, “Suppose I won’t,” as Riddle retreated.

“You’re all too nice to him,” Orion griped.

Down the lawn, Alphard watched as Riddle met up with Prewett and exchanged familiar pleasantries before retreating into the tree line and disappearing in the forest. 

“What do you think it is they’re doing in there?” Alphard asked.

To which Orion replied offhandedly, “Probably playing house like the pouffes they are.”

Were they? Alphard wondered, staring at the spot in which they’d disappeared from sight. Was Riddle really so free roaming as all that?

He hadn’t the chance to ask. Even without tutoring and dueling club, Riddle had many duties about the school as a prefect which kept him busy, and with most classes more or less suspended for the taking of finals, he threw himself into these tasks zealously, even helping Slughorn keep all his appointments by filling in for him on detentions. Which was as good an opportunity as any Alphard thought when he learned this from another boy in his class during their potions final.

“Professor,” he said, standing up about a third of the way through the test and looking Slughorn dead in the eyes, “Go suck a cock!”

“Detention young man,” Slughorn snapped without even blinking. “Room 403 on sub level 1.”

Room 403 was empty. Riddle had pulled himself up behind an old desk in the abandoned space, which Alphard could clearly see as he entered by the large book laying open there beside a piece of note paper and an ink stained quill but the boy himself was missing. At least from sight. Alphard could hear him somewhere, hidden behind some column or another, whispering under his breath.

“Excuse me?” He called into the seeming emptiness of the old classroom. “I’m here for detention.”

“One moment,” Riddle called before giving one last, almost venomous sounding whisper to whomever it was that he was conversing with and seeming to form out of one of the shadows in an alcove on the back wall.

“Alphard,” he said cheerfully by way of greeting. “What have you done this time?”

“I told professor Slughorn to suck a cock,” Alphard explained.

This brought a quizzical look to Riddle’s face. “Why?” 

“Because I felt like it.”

“Well what did he do?”

“Nothing,” Alphard said, toying with a splinter that hung from the top of one of the classroom’s old chairs. “I just felt like it.”

The laugh this pulled out of Riddle bounced off the arched ceilings of the small space in a jovial sort of way that even brought a smile to Alphard’s face despite the deep feeling of unease currently rolling in his gut.

“Who were you talking to?” He asked once the laugh had passed them.

“Who?” Riddle asked, glancing over his shoulder quickly before finishing with a ‘Oh, no one really. It’s not important.”

“Was it Prewett?” Alphard asked.

“Iggy?” Riddle replied.

“Yes, Ignatius Prewett. Was it Prewett who you were talking to? Do I have to spell everything out for you?” Alphard asked him.

He hoped speaking to Riddle like this might cow the other boy, but this intended result was opposite the effect it did have. Riddle smiled at him, almost indulgently. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t Prewett. I haven’t seen Prewett since we parted ways going up the stairs this morning and we shouldn’t see each other again until at least lunch.”

“Are you certain?” Alphard asked him.

Riddle’s smile did not falter although now he was beginning to look quite taken aback. “Positive,” he said.

“Oh you’re positive,” Alphard pressed. “You haven’t seen Prewett. So if I go back there I won’t find him.”

“Alphard, please,” Riddle said, “you won’t find anyone.”

“Well you should hope not,” Alphard said.

So Riddle said, “You sound like your sister.” Which was exactly the wrong thing to say to Alphard Black in that moment because it set the family rage upon him and he found himself pushing past the older boy, almost knocking Riddle dead off his feet despite the difference in both their size and weight as he made a bee line for the alcove. 

“Alphard!” Riddle snapped, reeling around after him, and making a snatch for the folds of his robes that came so close, Alphard could feel the tips of his fingers begin to dig in before loosing their grip.

“Prewett!” He called, expecting Ignatius Prewett to materialize out of the darkness and explain himself much the way that Riddle had only that didn’t happen at all. Instead, Alphard found himself falling through the shadow in the back of the classroom as though he were falling through a curtain, and landing in what, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be a ritual space. 

There was a, somewhat crude circle he did not recognize drawn on the floor in which a small black leather book had been laid beside what appeared to be a lock of human hair.

“Alphard!” Riddle called again as Alphard pulled himself just short of disturbing the chalk work. And then Riddle’s arms had wrapped back around him, pulling him again through the curtain of darkness and back out into the classroom on the other side. 

“Please tell me you didn’t break the circle,” Riddle half way begged against the shell of his ear. It was the first time Alphard had ever heard him sound like that, so it sounded raw and panicked. 

“I didn’t,” Alphard assured him. “I saw it just in time.”

There was a shake in the deep breath Riddle inhaled then. Alphard felt it vibrate from the air by his head into Riddle’s chest and down along his spine and into his own body. It was a tight hold. The kind with fear laced throughout it, but not a selfish fear from what Alphard could tell so much as a protective one. 

“I’m sorry,” Riddle said, lips still moving in Alphard’s hair, breath still rolling down over his ear. This close, Riddle had a bit of a musk to his smell. A kind of masculinity just barely being born there. Alphard felt loose in his arms, almost limp, but not out of any sort of worry. No. He simply never wanted to move again. Just to be held tightly like this by a strong boy would be enough to bring him peace.

He hummed his refusal of the apology softly. “Why didn’t you tell me you were just doing magic?” He asked.

“Because it’s not magic I’m supposed to be doing,” Riddle explained and Alphard could feel the soft edge of a lip catch the shell of his ear. Riddle was getting closer, drawing him in harder, the arms around him were constricting, trapping him in against Riddle’s chest.

“Well I would’t tell anyone,” Alphard assured him.

“You wouldn’t?”

“No. You already know I can keep a secret.” Alphard was close enough as he said this, he could physically feel the slight shock that ran through Riddle at the words.

“I suppose I do,” Riddle agreed but he did not let go and Alphard did not try to break free. So they stood like that, front to back, Riddle almost doubled over him, grip tightening ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, until it was almost difficult to breathe.

“Why don’t you struggle?” Riddle asked him, lips now nipping at the lobe of his ear.

“Do you want me to?” Alphard asked.

What Riddle did not do was say yes but what Riddle did do was make a noise that was somewhere between a rasp and a groan. That same sort of bone shaking noise he’d made the last time they’d come into such contact. He made this noise that Alphard could feel through his whole body and in the floor where it radiated up at him, and he squeezed down even further so Alphard had to gasp to draw a full breath. But all this was as good an indication as any. 

Riddle’s role here was to hold him still and Alphard’s role was to squirm. So he did.

“Riddle,” he said, and he tried to be warning about it, “Let me go.”

This got him a sort of silent purr, a noise so quiet he could not hear it so much as feel it. And the grip on him was almost painful now, nearly crushing. Riddle really was strong up this close and this mixed with his size quite well for such an action as pinning someone this way. Alphard took the queue and struggled harder, knowing it was perfectly useless to do so, but also knowing that the more of a fight he put up, the heavier Riddle’s breathing came against the back of his neck.

“Stop it!” Alphard quailed. Breathing really was an annoying amount of effort at this point but he didn’t really mind as long as it kept getting the same response it had gotten him so far. He gasped and pawed and did his best to seem as though he truly was trying to get free, like he was maybe even scared. He loved play acting and to find a game that the studious Riddle actually enjoyed was thrilling. 

“Let go!” He begged. 

And Riddle buried his face deeper into Alphard’s hair before whispering, “No.” In that same sort of tone he’d used the last time their interactions had strayed beyond professional.

“Help!” Alphard cried loud enough someone in the hallway might have been able to hear had they been in the hallway.

Instantly, Riddle clamped his hand down hard over Alphard’s nose and mouth and lifted him, one armed, hurrying the both of them through the veil and into the small ritual space he’d established. He carried Alphard, feet dangling, neatly over the circle, pushing him against the wall, crushing him against the flagstone hard enough that he could let go his death grip. Keeping his hand still firm over Alphard’s face, he let the other roam across the plain of Alphard’s chest, down his front to the hem of his robes.

“I could do anything I wanted to you,” Riddle told him with his voice so low it almost sounded like he spoke in the round, as though Riddle was everywhere and his voice echoed softly in the small space. “And you’d let me.”

Alphard thought this was quite a given considering his good sportsmanship up until this point. His active encouragement of and participation in this game was enough to prove he had some active desire to let these things happen. Even still, it was a wonder to watch all this click in Riddle’s head because it was as if he was incapable of comprehending the fact that anyone could enjoy what Alphard was currently enjoying, the feeling of being pinned by the weight of someone larger to the wall, mouth and nose covered so he could not scream, could hardly breathe, beyond all chance of rescue. 

Almost as a form of reassurance now, Alphard groaned his own agreement against Riddle’s palm.

“I put you in the hospital wing,” Riddle continues, breath hot and damp on the side of Alphard’s face now, “And here you are back for more.”

Alphard was squirming for a different reason now, not to play act any longer, or because he truly wanted to get away but because the progression of Riddle’s fingertips over the expanse of his thigh was so overwhelming he couldn’t hold still.

“You have no sense of self preservation,” Riddle said as he fought to fill his lungs all the way. “I could hurt you.”

But he wouldn’t. Not seriously. Not actually. Not in a way that could have lasting damage. Not that Alphard could tell him this when he could hardly manage to pull air through the tight spaces between Riddle’s fingers as Riddle ran his hand up the skirt of his robes, toying with the sensitive skin on his inner thighs through the fabric of his tights.

Alphard clawed at the hand over his face, trying his damndest to worm his fingers in under Riddle’s own and pry them off for a good breath of air. But this renewed panic did nothing but spur Riddle onward. The other boy’s profile dipped out of sight and he felt teeth glide lightly over the skin of his throat as Riddle used the grip he had on his face to wrench his head out of the way. Alphard felt the fight go back out of his limbs the moment those teeth made contact with his skin. 

Now a sort of fission had started up, ringing across his surface like a skipping stone on water. His lungs heaved and burned and for a moment he thought he might loose consciousness again when Riddle finally let go. And see? Alphard thought, he hadn’t hurt him. Last time had been a mistake. They’d just gone too far too fast.

“What did you do to end up here, again?” The other boy asked him, curling the hand that had been across his face around one of his hips and lifting so his toes almost left the ground again and the round of his ass ground gently against Riddle in his excitement. 

“I insulted the teacher,” Alphard explained. 

“On purpose?”

“On purpose,” Alphard admitted.

“You wanted this,” Riddle accused and he was right so Alphard said, “Yes,” without missing a beat.

“Orion would be disappointed,” Riddle whispered. 

It was enough to catch Alphard’s breath high in his throat. Enough to make him keen quietly against the flagstones. The air felt heavy in his lungs and Riddle felt heavy across his back. So heavy he could hardly hear the door open beyond the pounding of his ears. In fact, he may have missed it completely had Riddle not suddenly clapped a hand back over his mouth and frozen still.

“Riddle,” someone was calling beyond the veil, “Slughorn sent me down with a test for the little Black boy, said he got kicked out of the testing hall.” Alphard frowned as he recognized Prewett’s voice. 

“Just a moment,” Riddle called back. Then, putting Alphard down as quietly as he could he hissed, “Don’t move a muscle until I come back.”

Alphard didn’t reply. Head to the wall, he was too busy heeding this new order. Behind him he could hear Riddle arranging his clothing before he stepped back through the veil.

“Where’s the boy?” Prewett asked somewhere beyond the darkness which separated them. 

“I had him fetch me something from the kitchen,” Riddle lied smoothly. “Thanks for these. I’ll give them to him once he’s back,” he added as the quiet stuffing of parchment joined their words on the air.

Prewett hummed nervously before saying, “Ah, well then, ta,” and leaving the way he’d come.

There was a moment of silence, Alphard kept his head to the wall, eyes closed, waiting for the sound of Riddle’s shoes to make its way back through the veil.

“Turn to me,” Riddle said once he was properly concealed. 

Obediently, Alphard listened. Riddle stood half way through the veil, parts of his body nearly entirely obscured in the shadows of it. Gorgeous as always but something in his face had changed since Prewett had walked in. A part of him, the part that had been left alone with Burgie for years without a soul in earshot to hear them scream if they were hurt save their mother who was near dead to the world, rushed to ask what had upset him. Was he alright? Did he need anything? Only the words died on his mouth and refused to come out. Instead, he stood there, waiting on whatever order Riddle gave him next. 

The other boy’s face was distant, almost aloof, as though the passion had gone out of the moment once the predator had been forced to release its jaws. “You’re a mess,” he said then. “We should clean you up.” And with that he went about setting Alphard’s clothes to rights even as Alphard squirmed and made small noises of protest.

“You have an exam to do,” Riddle said, not unkindly against Alphard’s ear. And then, almost as an afterthought, Riddle pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before retreating.

“Did Prewett upset you?” Alphard asked as he reached about the halfway point in his test and suddenly seemed to remember himself. He felt almost as though he had been absent the entire time his body had been working through the written portion of the test.

“Prewett upset me?” Riddle asked as though the notion was ludicrous. “Don’t be silly, he’s my friend,” but he refused to meet Alphard’s eye as he said this.

“Would he be jealous if he saw?” Alphard asked.

Now Riddle looked up, eyes pale compared to their previously black state even in the dim light of the room, even at this distance. “No,” he said. “Prewett is just a friend,” and the way he said this made it clear, but still he went on. “This isn’t anything a friend ought to be involved in or even know about.”

So they weren’t friends. They were something else entirely. Something more personal than friends. 

Riddle didn’t need to argue him into finishing the rest of his test. It seemed easy while ruminating on that thought.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> personal HC: Slytherin student council meetings are held like little informal courts and generally there's a Malfoy to play regent because Slytherin kids are fucking obsessed with school politics and Malfoys like to remind everyone they're _It_ in politics.

After the initial incident, Orion was ever easier to find, and ever more persistent in asking him nosy little questions. Often, their private conversations would find sneaky little ways of doubling back to Alphard’s recent stint in the Hospital Wing. 

“I just can’t have anything happening to you,” Orion insisted as they sat in the common room two weeks before school’s out, Alphard still staunchly refusing to answer any questions. 

Alphard blew a huff of breath through his nose as he wadded the green velvet of the curtains that separated them off from other sitters and talkers along the walls between his fingers. “I’m not so woefully delicate,” he told the book he was still attempting, vainly, to read. It was some muggle thing he was pretty sure, maybe an old magical text they’d got ahold of and translated poorly, but still he’d seen Riddle and Prewett discussing the novel at length with much exuberation and wished to be able to hold such lively conversations with Riddle. The kind where Prewett said just three words about something called Feanor and set Riddle to gales of helpless laughter. But truth be told, the book was entirely impossible and it was a wonder one boy, let alone two might be capable to reading, understanding and discussing its text. 

Probably, he should have offered Orion some sort of reassurance about his being tougher than expected or knowing how to handle himself, but instead he asked, “Have you ever heard of the Ainur?”

To which Orion replied with a very flat, “No. Have you ever heard of manners?”

Reluctantly, Alphard put the book down. “Really,” he said, “I am fine. You know our family. Always given to feinting and swooning.”

“Then explain to me,” Orion broke in, leaning dangerously into Alphard’s space, “What were the bruises on your neck? Looked like fingers. As though someone might have choked you.”

“Honestly, Orion, it’s nothing.”

“Nothing,” Orion pressed. “I measured my own hand against those marks, I did. You know those marks were the size of my hands plus a third? You know that?”

Alphard rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“Alphie, I need you to tell me. Why did you show up in the hospital wing unconscious with the imprint of a grown man’s hand across your throat?”

“Why does Walburga lactate?” Alphard countered, smiling at the shiver of revulsion that ran through Orion at the thought. 

“Because Cygnus needs to eat and certainly your mother can’t feed him,” the other boy snapped, “Now you answer my question.”

“Honestly, Rion, I’m not entirely sure that I can trust you,” Alphard said.

“Not entirely sure?” Orion demanded under his breath. 

“I’m not,” Alphard confirmed. “Not all of my secrets pertain only to me.”

Here, Orion’s face broke into a vicious snarl, “You think I would ever compromise secrets told to me by my own family?” He asked but it was more of an accusation.

“It’s a trust principal. Someone has trusted me-“

“To keep quiet about how they choked you to unconsciousness?!” Orion hissed.

“-and they would never be too sure they could trust you as well so I keep their secrets, Orion. I am a loyal friend,” but even as Alphard used the word ‘friend’, he knew it was entirely inapplicable. 

Orion simply gaped at him. “Are you quite serious?” He asked.

“I mean only to defend harmless and childish games, Orion. There were no adults involved. Do I look so dense to you?”

“Alphard,” Orion bit between his teeth, face now so close and voice so low it was reminiscent of being loomed over by Riddle. How funny the two of them were to remind him of each other, he thought. They were really quite similar in a number of ways from presentation to sense of humor. “I cannot stress to you enough that strangulation is not a harmless game.”

Alphard smiled at him. “And I can’t stress to you enough that I’m just fine,” he said. “You’re my cousin, Orion, and I know you’ve always been there to look after me but-“

“But nothing!” Orion hissed. “You listen to me! I am older than you! When I say what to do you listen to me!”

“If I told you and you told someone else I would get in trouble too,” Alphard explained. 

And something clicked behind Orion’s eyes before his face fell and he threw himself back against the cushions he’d been lounging on before this conversation got heated.

“Fine,” he said. “Don’t heed me. Do what you will. Fuck off. Read your silly little book.”

To which Alphard said, “I will,” but he still found himself unable to progress any further down the page than he had because he couldn’t manage to suss out who’s names were who’s and why there always seemed to be an exponential lot more of them cropping up all the time and eventually he was pulled from he text entirely when he heard Orion say:

“There he is, silly little twat.”

This was prompt enough to give up on the book another moment longer and cast around the room for who the silly twat in question was, at which point it became instantly clear that Orion referred to Riddle who seemed to have entered Abraxas Malfoy’s informal little court at the center of the room. Alphard watched as Riddle displayed impeccable manors in an introduction before announcing to the group at large his plans for a last minute house cup take over.

“What is it you hate about him so much?” Alphard asked.

Orion gawked at him again. “Look at him,” he said with a vague gesture toward all of Riddle, “He’s nothing but a muggleborn, half way he’s a muggle himself, and surely he’s capable, I don’t mean to dispute facts, but that doesn’t make him one of us.”

“He’s a credit to our house,” Alphard argued.

Orion was staunch though, “But he’s not one of us. You can’t just become one of us. You either are or you aren’t. It’s in our blood.”

“I know that,” Alphard said, turning back to watch Riddle continue animatedly though the ambitious strategy he’d concocted, which seemed less offensive and more defensive, aimed to take points from the other houses rather than spend the precious time gaining points for Slytherin. Malfoy himself, sitting on an armchair surrounded by his entourage, seemed very pleased with this. Malfoy, who was more one of them than anyone else might ever be.

Alphard knew quite as well as one might what blood meant. He understood the differences between their caste and the rest of society. He knew well why the sacred families were sacred. But he also knew Riddle was not a muggle in anyway. He knew, as apparently so did Malfoy by the look of utter pride on the elder boy’s face, that Riddle could not possibly be an outsider.

“Still, isn’t Riddle the success story everyone wants for a muggleborn?”

“No.” Orion said. “I have no dreams of watching pigs soar.”

Yet most everyone else in the room left their eyes hanging on Riddle with a certain ardour that implied all of them understood the inherent nature of his belonging with them rather than to them. Quietly, Alphard excused himself and went to sit with the court.

“-yet considering the gullible nature of most Hufflepuffs,” Riddle was saying confidently, “it shouldn’t be too difficult to lure them out of place and set things up in some way or another so that it reflects badly on them. Much the same as to a Gryffindor, the Hufflepuffs truest desire in most cases is to help, and while they may not be so self centered and interested in heroics, the results are often the same. For this, I suggest a measure much like the kind muggles use out in the old main road of the village I lived in for a time. One muggle would go out on the road and pretend to be hit squarely by a cart of motor vehiculist and fall to the ground, at which point a friend of theirs would rush up and play witness to the whole thing, saying they would not shut up about the incident unless they were immediately paid. Only instead of all that, one of ours is horribly injured while a friend goes off to get help, arming our target with things he might need to administer such help but which make him out to be the culprit, and once he is staged just rightly over our injured housemate, a third friend calls in a teacher who is allowed to make what they will of the scene, all of us playing as witnesses to some sort of assault.”

“Bravo,” said Malfoy in his tremulous little voice. “I can’t wait to play the victim to some horrid Hufflepuff two years my senior.”

To which arose a chorus of encouragements, many assuring that any person thought to have harmed him would certainly have difficulty in finding future employment. A chorus that distracted most of the others from the smile that passed silently between Riddle and Malfoy before Malfoy finally lifted his hand to dismiss him.

“Be gone,” he said. “Though you have done well, I tire to look on you.”

“And I on you,” Riddle answered him before excusing himself of the scene, leaving the wake of his passing as a sly smile on Malfoy’s mouth which stayed strong in its spot for nearly half a minute.

“Enjoy the performance?” Orion asked, come to collect him from the spectacle.

“Well he is very clever,” Alphard said.

To which Orion replied, “That he is indeed,” a hand firm on Alphard’s arm to lift and usher him in the direction Orion wished to go.

Alphard squawked as Orion bustled him out of the Common Room, up the stairs and down the corridor toward the kitchen.

“Listen to me,” he said, pressing Alphard back into an alcove so he had him effectively caught. “And listen good, now, yeah?” He sounded almost like a gangster in this moment. As though he could have been a muggle with a knife in his pocket waiting to slice Alphard’s ears off his head. “I know it was Riddle who strangled you-“

“H-“

“Shut up! I know it was Riddle! And I know the two of you are playing some sort of _sick game_ like the one he’s playing with your sister; So listen to me! When I tell you Riddle’s scum, when I say he’s no good, and he’s a bad bet, and Malfoy’s only gambling because he can’t loose on anything with as much as he’s got. I am telling you! I’m telling you: you will not walk away from this unscathed. He’s a bad fucking egg that one! He is. Do you understand me?” 

Here Alphard nodded mutely. 

“Don’t fucking do this!” Orion continued. “Don’t do this to _me_.”

Alphard stood there for a moment, hands braced beneath Orion’s on the little pillars that boxed him in, trying to think what to say next, what even to do. 

“It’s my job to take care of you,” Orion pressed.

“Nothing’s happened,” Alphard argued.

“You are my responsibility!” Orion raged.

And Alphard saw it before Orion did, a hand. It suddenly reached in from past the wall, where Alphard couldn’t see around the alcove, and seized up on Orions biceps, stopping his cousin dead in the midst of his outburst. It was a crushing grip, Alphard could see, both from the way it rent the fabric of Orion’s clothes and from the way Orion’s eyes went wide as saucers.

Alphard watched the color drain from his cousin’s face as the other boy turned, looking up into the face of this new aggressor.

“Is something the matter here?” Riddle asked in a smooth voice.

“No,” Orion said. “No… Just discussing safety. ’S’alright, Alphard,” he added then, letting go the alcove wall with the arm Riddle had not seized to give room for Alphard to leave. “You can go now.”

“Ta,” Alphard said, once he’d rounded the both of them, locked in their moment as they were, and looked back a final time before making his way back to the common room.

“Have you seen Riddle?” Walburga asked him almost the second he’d pushed his way back in. The room was in post court disarray, Malfoy clearly missing from his armchair, and everyone else milling freely about, discussing the campaigns that they’d all voted into or out of action for the final week’s closing celebrations. “I wanted to thank him for his contributions to the discussion today.”

“He was by the kitchens with Orion,” Alphard said blankly, still entirely unsure what to make of the behavior he’d just witnessed from both boys.

Walburga offered him a quick smile and some thanks before rushing out the way he’d come.

“They’re going to set a duel, aren’t they?” Lucretia asked the second she’d gone.

“I think so,” Alphard admitted.

“I’m not surprised,” Lucretia said. “My brother’s been looking for a reason to fight Riddle seriously ever since they suspended Dueling Club activities. As if the boy doesn’t have enough to worry about, being homeless this summer.”

“Riddle’s homeless this summer?” Alphard asked. “How would you know that?”

“I ought to. His best friend is my fiancé,” Lucretia deadpanned. “Now I’ve told you that won’t you tell me what they’re fighting about?” She pressed.

Alphard blinked. It was reassuring to know this fight had been coming for some time now regardless of anything he’d done but he still figured that Lucretia was as good a persona as any to be honest with. “I think I might have started it,” he said.

“Well then shouldn’t we just change your name to Helen and have it be a true epic?” Lucretia joked.

Alphard felt himself choke on the celluloid of his own laughter.

Not even an hour later, the entirety of Slytherin house found itself on the lawn, the sound of dinner being set out tinkling toward them through the Great Hall as they all waited, students and teachers for Orion and Riddle to see to their formalities.

“It should be a good show,” Slughorn was saying to Malfoy, for whom he’d summoned a comfortable looking wingback chair that now sat grandiosely out of place on the grass with the rest of them. 

“Oh certainly,” Malfoy agreed, playing idly with a lock of his golden hair, “Only I wish they wouldn’t. All this machismo is bad for my skin.”

“Wouldn’t want to get a rash,” Slughorn said when suddenly Prewett, who they’d both agreed was the most impartial member of their house even despite being Riddle’s friend, shouted out the queue for them to turn back around after their paces and begin.

Instantly, Orion snapped about and unleashed a batbogey hex so nasty it warped the air it moved through like a projectile moving -fast- through water but Riddle merely picked himself up from the ground and rolled out of the way, landing on both feet further up the lawn with the high ground. 

Then, he made a slashing motion with his wand arm that seemed to grab Orion by both legs at once, and tip him over backward like he was nothing more than a skinny teapot.

“Problem with you, Black, is you telegraph everything,” Riddle taunted as Orion struggled his way up off the dew sodden grass.

“Problem with you, Riddle, is you’re a cunt!” Orion bit back.

To which Slughorn responded with a panicked “Boys! Language!”

“Oh let them,” Malfoy argued, even as Riddle, innocent of any swearing called back an apology. “Gives an opportunity to redirect the violence.”

“Good point,” Slughorn agreed before calling out, “Actually, Swear all you like, boys!”

But neither of them seemed to be listening because Orion had used the distraction of Riddle’s apology to level an exploding spell at the other boy. 

“Finite!” Riddle called out, holding his wand arm out, wand against the horizon as he dropped his hand. 

“Fuck you!” Orion shouted as his spell nullified in the air. 

“Not my type,” Riddle called back. 

Orion, ever held to the family ways, let out a roar so loud in response to this that Malfoy covered his ears and muttered, “Damn Banshees.”

“This is going to devolve into a fist fight,” Lucretia said to Walburga, “Just you watch. You know how Rion gets.”

“He’s not the only one with a reputation,” Prewett cut in as Riddle flipped himself out of the way of another vicious looking hex.

“Oh, yes, I do remember that,” said Druella.

“Remember what?” Alphard asked, eyes still trained on the disaster he’d caused, watching unblinkingly as Riddle openly toyed with his beloved cousin in front of every important person in the school.

“Riddle’s well versed in muggle tactics,” Prewett said diplomatically.

“He beat another muggleborn student so badly within the first week of his first year that the boy wound up hospitalized,” Lucretia clarified.

“You make it sound barbaric,” Walburga complained. 

Alphard wasn’t sure which to pay more attention to, this conversation or the fight in front of him. Certainly both were just as vicious and life altering.

“I’ll kill you!” Orion was bellowing now, even as Riddle continued to, seemingly effortlessly avoid each of his spells.

“It was barbaric,” Both Lucretia and Prewett insisted in unison.

“Why doesn’t Riddle fight back?” Alphard asked. “It’s like he isn’t even taking Orion seriously.”

“Oh he is,” Prewett assured him. “It’s just that last time Riddle went up against your cousin before holiday break, it ended in a draw.”

“I remember that,” Alphard said.

“So this time, I helped him work out a strategy for the tournament coming up before summer. Only it was canceled so I thought I wouldn’t be able to see him try it out but here we are.”

“What’s the strategy?” Druella asked. Before Alphard got the chance to, breath stolen away by the ferocity with which Orion was now firing spell after spell, seemingly trying to overwhelm Riddle so that dodging became impossible.

“To turn the old family Black Rages into a weapon,” Prewett explained. “He’s been covertly antagonizing Orion for months now.”

The thought of this made Alphard a bit sick to his stomach. He wanted to run out between the two fo them shouting for them to stop it that instant and make nice like the friends they could be if they just saw how similar they were to each other.

“Seems an unintended consequence is he’s making Orion look like a mad idiot,” Prewett observed as Riddle set his feet into the ground and drew up a defensive spell rather than dodging because Orion had managed to back him up in front of Malfoy’s seat and was now leveling spells against him there. It was dirty, desperate fighting, and everyone knew it.

Still, Malfoy just yawned, seeming perfectly content to have only Riddle between him and Orion Black’s bad judgement.

“That he is,” Walburga agreed. Which was when Druella butted in, excited, to say, “Look! He’s getting tired.”

She was right. Orion was now standing in a standard roof guard, obviously ready to deflect Riddle’s next offensive spell because it was all he had energy left to do.

“Have you quite finished?” Riddle asked.

A wind rolled by, tugging on the assembly in attempts to steal any possessions they had not nailed down so a few of the watchers had to grab for their hats.

“Never!” Orion spat. 

To which Riddle replied only with, “Shame,” before releasing a barrage of silent attacks. He seemed immovable stood there like that, as if he were a column of stone or a statue. There was no rage on his face, no anger, simply hardline determination.

“Look at his style,” Walburga said appreciatively.

“I helped him with that,” Prewett boasted. “We’ve been studying sword fencing.”

“Where?” Lucretia demanded.

“In the forest,” Prewett said noncommittally as Riddle aimed each of his spells at pulling Orion’s tired defense apart at the seams. And the way it was said it sounded almost like a normal boyish pursuit for the two of them to engage in together.

But riddle now looked unrelenting, entirely un-boy-like at all as he drew up over Orion, beating down on I’m from above with each consecutive blow. Closer and closer he stalked, a knife hunter hungry enough to single out a wolf as prey.

“Fuck you!” Orion bellowed as he beat off hit after hit, half taking the ones he couldn’t fully anticipate through Riddle’s utter silence. “I’ll fuck your mother!” He said, and it would have seemed a useless thing to say, only suddenly, Alphard saw it.

He did not see it on Riddle’s face as the boy had turned from view but it shivered up his spine, the same sort of earth churning rage he’d frothed Orion into in order to tire him out. Orion froze then, seemingly realizing he’d pushed it too far, that he’d made a grave error as Riddle’s arm went up, mechanically, and the boy’s lips drew back off his teeth as though he meant to say something.

“Stop!” Malfoy called then, and against all belief, Riddle did. He stopped, mid word, a look on his face as though he were trying to hold back vomit.

“This duel is over. It is decided. Riddle is our winner,” Malfoy declared.

No one moved. Even the teachers seemed frozen. All of them had felt the shift in the air Riddle had caused as he reached out for that last spell. It had rolled bone cold through all of them. He hadn’t been about to fire a hex, but a curse. And he’d been so close as he readied for it, had Malfoy allowed the blow to fall, it could well have been an execution strike. Orion had known it too. His eyes were wide with the gnosis he might have died just there in that moment, that Riddle might have killed him for daring to say anything about his mother. 

Even from the distance they now stood, it was clear that the effort Riddle had to put into lowering his arm caused him to shake, almost violently. Alphard saw Riddle’s mouth move but heard no sound. Saw Orion flinch hard as the fear seemed to wash out of him, allowing him to struggle to his feet, further down the lawn, away from the castle where Riddle stood, rooted as a tree between him and the entrance to the Great Hall.

“Come, now, Black,” Slughorn called, hurrying past Riddle down the lawn to collect Orion.

No one moved to Riddle’s side in any attempt to do the same with him. Instead, they left him standing in the grass, body still quivering gently as the wind tugged at his robes and stole heat from his body, while they filed back inside for dinner. 

The sun hung bright on the horizon, still in its retreat from the day, painting the scene in surreal reds and violets. Even Prewett and the rest of Alphard’s family headed back inside, leaving only him and Malfoy still standing there on the lawn, Riddle’s solitary company.

Malfoy did not move until the doorway to the Great Hall had shut the cold of the evening out. then, he stood, banishing his chair, and strode gently up to Riddle’s side. Laying a hand then on the other boy’s arm, he said something quietly in that fancy, not-quite-French only the most important Malfoys seemed to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Riddle bit back.

“Oc,” Malfoy said with a knowing nod, his free hand held out.

Wordlessly, Riddle passed his wand into Malfoy’s palm. And then Alphard saw something so emotionally vulnerable, he couldn’t have expected to see it after watching Riddle loose all human thought so utterly. Riddle turned, and let his head sink against Malfoy’s shoulder, let Malfoy pat him gently along the neck and shoulders, whispering quiet reassurances. 

Alphard didn’t fully understand the interaction. It seemed so out of place and unexpected, but he did understand it wasn’t his place to watch it, that he had, likely accidentally, been allowed to view something entirely private. And he knew, watching that, that he shouldn’t have stayed at all. That he should have gone with Walburga to see to Orion. That that was his place. Not this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> accidentally posted the unedited version of this and had to go to great lengths to get the edited version up lmao. love having multiple devices that don't like to synch right.

The next time Alphard saw Riddle was on appointment. Riddle set the date by passing him a note in the great hall after breakfast. He’d had enough sense to avoid every Black in the school following his unsportsmanlike win over Orion in their duel two weeks prior but clearly wanted to tie up some loose ends before school officially ended for the year so Alphard obliged him by sneaking up to the astronomy tower during lunch because despite the clear advantage Riddle’s strategy had given their house, as they now stood poised for the cup, Orion’s anger showed no signs of clearing within the next five years at least. 

It was a wonderful place to get away from people that time of day and Riddle seemed to know this well as he looked very comfortable perched on one of the parapets, legs dangling out over the open space. He’d laid a picnic out on a spare blanket with some food he’d clearly nabbed from the kitchen but then it seemed he’d lost himself entirely in thought staring out over the dizzying drop to the grounds below them.

“Excuse me,” Alphard said by way of announcing his presence. 

Riddle’s face was served up with something nearing confusion when he turned round. “Oh, Alphard,” he said, sliding effortlessly back onto the roof. “I was expecting you- I just-“

“It’s fine,” Alphard assured him. “I really oughtn’t talk to you after you tried to kill my cousin,” You know?” He added as Riddle began to gesture toward the picnic. 

“I know,” Riddle said. 

“I do still like you, but you shouldn’t have done that,” Alphard pressed.

To which Riddle, arm still frozen in its half gesture said, “I’m sorry.”

“You ought to apologize to Orion,” Alphard admonished.

“Trust me when I say speaking to him at all in any way would only make things worse,” said Riddle.

He was probably right too. Orion was frothing mad. Even Walburga had stopped talking about Riddle in his presence for fear of it setting him off. Likely as anything, if Riddle approached him at all, there would be no reason to be leveraged against his hurt pride.

“But you are sorry?” Alphard asked. “To Orion?”

“Of course I am,” Riddle said so Alphard indulged him by sitting.

“I knew you would be the easiest member of your family for me to get ahold of,” Riddle explained as he sat down. 

This, Alphard found funny. “Using me to broker a truce is clever,” he laughed.

“It was the only thing I could think of,” Riddle said. “Lucretia even has Iggy avoiding me.”

It was still odd to hear Riddle use a pet name for Prewett, but then, they were good friends and Alphard had already looked into that one as deep as it went. It just hadn’t been something he’d ever expected to learn about Riddle, that there were people he was close enough to for him to use adoring little diminutives like that. 

“The two of us do have a rapport,” Alphard agreed, helping himself to a warm meat pie Riddle had nicked him.

Riddle, clearly aware of the customary etiquette, did not look at him as he ate and did not serve himself from the offered meal. But Alphard didn’t find this at all surprising considering how tenderly Malfoy had consoled him that night, as clearly Malfoy would never accept anything less than impeccable manners.

“If only you weren’t a rabid dog,” Alphard said, half joking, and Riddle returned the smile, eyes still trained on a bit of roof off by his left. “I’d have asked you to summer with us in London, but now Orion should never allow it.”

The smile on Riddle’s face broke into a chuckle. “Never,” he agreed.

“I do like you so much, Riddle,” Alphard repeated. “But you’re too reckless.”

“It’s true,” he said.

“My cousin is right about you, you know?”

“I know.”

“Well good,” Alphard told him. “But I still like you,” he continued.

Riddle nodded in the pause that hung as Alphard took another bite of pie. 

“I should let you continue to tutor me next year,” he said and Riddle did seem to find this agreeable as he nodded once more, his smile tugging a bit harder at the corner of his lips. “And I’ll put in a good word with my sister. And I’ll try,” here he emphasized the word try, “to smooth over Orion’s pride but he shall never be warm to you.”

“He never would have,” Riddle agreed and again he was right. Riddle as much a spectacle as Orion and now, on the high hill of this experience, Alphard could see the two of them were too similar to accept one another because they filled the same evolutionary niche in society and so would always be forced to compete to prove who had more of a right to exist in it.

Riddle had just won that right, leaving Orion bitter, resentful, and socially reserved. Alphard doubted he would recover fully from his anger even after they had all left school and become real wizards. Riddle had simply threatened his position past a point of acceptability and Orion would never forget that. 

“But,” he amended, “Orion won’t be in dueling club anymore and you can’t speak to him in the halls, nor can you ever sit with us at lunch or approach our party while we are all together. You can have Prewett only when Lucretia doesn’t.”

“Agreeable,” Riddle said a bit reluctantly. It seemed he wasn’t too keen on the idea to give Prewett up for any amount of time.

“Perhaps it isn’t a permanent solution,” Alphard tried to assure him. “We all do like you quite a lot. Except Orion,” he added and Riddle laughed.

“You’re very merciful,” Riddle said then, finally looking up and meeting Alphard’s eyes, though he kept his head ducked.

Alphard joined him in his amusement, as he invited him to join the meal. “Only if you compare me to Malfoy.”

Obviously, Riddle did but Alphard was not so hubretical he thought he could compete in that arena, though he had realized of late that Riddle had no chance to truly replace Orion either and so he was fine with this. That was alright. Riddle belonged to Malfoy and Alphard had no intention of changing that because he also belonged to someone else, something else, his own family and all there in it.

“Where will you go this summer?” Alphard asked him, thinking he knew well the answer, that Riddle would go to the Manor because Malfoy had taken him in and the opportunities there were as endless as their library was. 

“I had plans to track down my uncle,” Riddle said candidly. “I should tell you where if you promise not to let Orion cotton on I’ve told you a secret this time.”

“It’s not my fault he’s so nosy,” Alphard argued but Riddle offered him a soft, “I know.”

“There’s a little village near Ballycroy,” Riddle explained. “Where the nuns at the home used to receive letters from, but for some reason I never had the stomach to look at,” his brow tugged down as he said this and Alphard felt a deep sympathy for him. “I hadn’t thought about it until this year when it cropped up in the paper next to an odd name. The kind that sort of leapt out at me.”

“What was it?” Alphard asked.

“Do you promise not to tell?”

“I promise.”

“Morfin Gaunt,” Riddle told him.

The name Guant sent a chill down Alphard’s spine. Orion was right. Riddle was dangerous, and he certainly wasn’t one of theirs like Walburga wanted to believe. Whatever looks he might have in common with them were entirely coincidental and had come about through whatever muggle intervention now became clearly apparent as the only thing that had saved him from the utter travesty of his own genetics. Better to be outbred at that point. No wonder Malfoy had such an interest in him. No other family would stand a chance at taming such a creature.

“I didn’t really think anything of it other than that it was an odd name but then, further into the article, which was about him agitating local muggles despite being imprisoned for it for several years following a previous incident, it mentioned that his father, Marvolo had also been to Azkaban for assaulting a ministry official,” Riddle elaborated.

The significance of this was not lost on either of them. Riddle was a bastard, that much was certain, but he was not a bastard of a family that could be considered anything close to sacred any longer. In fact, he was a child of the profane. He was Slytherin’s heir, which was probably what Orion had learned as Riddle stood over him in his victory.

Alphard did not ask if Riddle had caused all the ruckus and killed the muggle girl. He did to want to know. The administration had said it was the giant boy’s pet spider and he wanted to believe that.

Everyone knew about the Guants though. They spoke about them in hushed tones during holiday parties and every time their children brought home report cards. The Guants were a warning. A ‘what not to do’. They were pariahs. Too proud to keep being proud. It was based on their mistakes that the Malfoys had begun allowing their children to accept marriages from families no longer deemed sacred. Before their exile, halfblooded Malfoys had been as unheard of as halfblooded Blacks. Alphard knew about them because Orion’s father said their name like a dirty word and told their tale like a ghost story.

“So you’ll go to him?” Alphard asked. He couldn’t imagine what that might be like. His mind’s eye conjured the image of a monster with too long limbs and ashen skin that spoke in strange hissing groans and could strike terror so real as to petrify a man with only a word, the creatures his uncle had described to him on so many occasions. Had that been what Riddle did to Orion during their duel? Had he said something only Orion could hear and frozen him in his own terror? Could Riddle really turn the hearts of men?

“I’m not afraid of him,” Riddle said just as honestly as he’d admitted to seeking the Guants out in the first place.

“I’d been told they were extinct,” Alphard said. 

“There’s only the one left now,” Riddle agreed.

Alphard did not say what he felt. That it was probably for the best. That those things really rather ought to be wiped out. That Slytherin’s legacy had become a stain when their pride had gone to their heads and their loins. Because, even knowing this, he still liked Riddle. He still wanted to see Riddle rise above all this. He wanted Riddle to overcome it like he had so far overcome everything else and he wanted it because Riddle deserved that. He truly did. So Alphard sat there, chewing more of his lips than the pie, eyes wide, fastened on Riddle’s face.

“I don’t expect much from him. Surely if what Malfoy tells me is true, he can’t feed or house me. I only want him to answer my questions. That’s all I’ve ever wanted you understand?” He asked then, a sort of panic entering his voice so Alphard knew, even without wanting to know, what it was he was talking about. This was a confession. The only confession Riddle would ever make. The only one he could make because he was not like them and thereby could not keep to their moral laws even if he should want to. “I just want answers. That’s all. I don’t mean it.”

“Of course you don’t,” Alphard said and he wondered if Malfoy knew this. He wondered what Malfoy thought, if Malfoy could keep Riddle on a leash or if keeping Riddle at all was a fools errand, attractive as he was. 

“So I’ll find my answers and then, yes, I suppose I’ll find my way to the Manor and I’ll stay there as long as they’ll have me, because Malfoy’s been gracious enough to tell me I’m welcome.”

He’d stay forever, Alphard hoped. Riddle was likely too dangerous to be cut loose on society. If they had wanted to be truly safe, they should never even have allowed him in school. But Alphard was glad they had anyway. He was glad to know Riddle and to know Riddle was going places. Great places. Great and terrible. That was certain. 

“Have I scared you?” Riddle asked, then, seeming suddenly self conscious and Alphard realized that not only did he not revile Riddle even for knowing this, he actually found himself somehow more endeared. 

“No,” he half lied, because he was afraid, but he didn’t want Riddle to know it. He didn’t want Riddle to make anything of it.

“Are you certain?” Riddle pressed and there was something to the thickness of his voice suddenly. Alphard felt the shift.

Riddle caught him eye by eye and finally Alphard was able to place what it was about those eyes that seemed so strange. Their pupils were wrong shaped, diamonds rather than rounds. It was painfully obvious in these moments, like it had been the first time Riddle had hunted him in tutoring and his pupils had almost entirely swallowed his irises, painting his eyes this mesmerizing near-black.

Riddle wanted him to be scared. Alphard noticed now that Riddle’s tongue swept out against his bottom lip, tasting the air, tasting the emotions Alphard had left hanging there so carelessly. It was a knowledge that sent something strange and unexpected though him, akin to the fire he’d felt the last times they’d come to blows like this but tinged with real panic. 

He’d been too trusting, he realized, and he was about to be too trusting now, perhaps not even because he chose to trust Riddle but because he could not move. He could not break eye contact. When Riddle reached out for his wrist he couldn’t jerk it away. And letting Riddle puppet him, limp and frozen as he was, felt almost intoxicatingly good. So good it sang through his entire body, that same fission he’d grown to expect in the other boy’s presence.

“I could make you do whatever I wanted,” Riddle told him as he dragged him, bodily over the plates of food between them, into his lap, and pinned him against his chest.

“And I could make you want it,” he promised, tilting Alphard’s face so their eyes stayed locked one to the other. 

Alphard thought about running, but hardly any of him could even come to want such a thing. It seemed so much more inviting to stay here. He truly wanted to. He wanted Riddle to never grow tired of him. He wanted to be Riddle’s favorite so much that the protests his mind was capable of throwing up seemed distant and negligible. 

Riddle was here with his all encompassing hands and Alphard could do nothing to look away. 

“Don’t you want that?” Riddle asked, smoothing a hand down his back, toying with the closure of his cummerbund.

And Alphard heard himself say “Yes” in a distant way that sent a pleasant sensation rolling in the pit of his stomach. 

“Don’t you want my attention?” 

He did. He wanted all he could get. He wanted to stay there on Riddle’s lap, his little doll. Almost effortlessly Riddle slid the cinch from his waist and pushed his way through the clasps that held Alphard’s robes together in the front, revealing the clothes he had on underneath, a light undershirt, a pair of thin linen tights, nothing too warm considering the good weather.

It was then Riddle broke eye contact to observe him, head turning quizzically as though he was thinking what to do next, calculating whatever move he wished to take. He bided his time in making the decision, leaving Alphard sitting there, acutely aware of being observed and hardly even able to move.

“No one will find us here,” Riddle said softly, fingers catching on one of Alphard’s nipples through the soft weave of his shirt. “We won’t be interrupted this time.”

This was a good thing, Alphard thought. He should really hate it if again he was told to wait when they’d come so close. He let Riddle push him down onto the blanket, uncaring whatever he might be lying in, and have reign over his body. Now, more than ever, the sheer size of the other boy was utterly daunting. Riddle wrapped a long arm around one of his legs and hoisted it up so it hung loose around his elbow, prying Alphard open like he was some sort of muscle who’s shell was to be rested out of the way in order to get to the meat inside.

“I can do whatever I’d like,” Riddle promised him and he moved so smoothly as he rolled their hips down and together that it almost felt as though he had not moved at all, but the world had rocked for him.

Skittering sparks of feeling flared up, running along the hard lines of Alphard’s pelvis and up his spine. Distantly, very distantly now, that part of his mind which had some sense still, kept up its feeble protest even as the noise it made faded into the background fuzz of Riddle’s ministrations. 

“I could even make you a woman,” Riddle threatened, fingers caught up in the waistband of Alphard’s tights. “Wouldn’t your cousin just hate that?” He pressed and this time Alphard actually heard himself moan out loud. 

Above them, the sky was summer clear, smattered with thick, fluffy clouds that rode high on warm currents. The Quidditch teams would be having their end of year group practice down on the pitch and if one of those jocks flew high enough they might be able to make out the distant forms of two Slytherin students fooling about on top of the astronomy tower, but even this was unlikely, and should it have come to pass, would only have caused more trouble than good.

Riddle tugged Alphard’s tights half way down his thighs so that he couldn’t run even if he had been able to summon the willpower to try, and heaved his calves up over his shoulder before he began wrestling with his own clothes, leaving Alphard unattended once more and still unable to do anything for it. So he just lay there, watching the birds flit about in their own jolly springtime throws. They offered no judgement on the scene beneath them, entirely oblivious to all human goings ons as they played their own courtships.

“You won’t tell him,” Alphard found the ability to ask as Riddle leaned back over him, obscuring the light and the scenery with his own beauty.

Instantly, the look on the other boy’s face softened, and he even passed a caring hand over the round of Alphard’s cheek. “Not on my own life,” he promised. “I would never do anything to besmirch your reputation.”

But before Alphard could say any thanks for the assurance, Riddle was pressing between his thighs, the weight of his cock brushing against Alphard’s, completely loosing the train of thought in that single motion. It was not a lot of sensation, but it was still enough at that moment, as he lay like a tortured little doll under a puppet master intent on using him to his own ends, to turn his mind over to a blank canvas of white noise. 

“Oh fuck,” he heard Riddle say in that same prayerful way, and the keening sound he made in response to it was so utterly shameless even he had to hide his face. Lest a quidditch player see and recognize him, that so distant voice in his mind reminded him frantically. But Riddle caught him by the wrists and wrenched his arms up above his head, pinning them there together in one of his strong hands.

“I own you,” the other boy promised the skin of his throat as he rocked himself back and forth, dragging them against each other in agonizing increments, slowly building his pace. “Your cousin can keep you all he likes, but he’ll always be running his hands down paths that mine mapped out for him.”

And Alphard did try to struggle then, but not so he could get free, not to escape. He wanted more and he wanted the power to take it despite the fact Riddle was unrelenting in holding him still, crushing down on him with all the weight his size advantage offered, pinning him like a mouse in the coils of a snake meant to squeeze its life from its body.

“I don’t usually let them squirm,” Riddle whispered against his ear, and the boy’s teeth felt overly sharp as they dragged down his neck, much sharper than they looked when he smiled, a fact which only further boggled the meaning of this statement. “But you’re special.”

“I am?”

“Oh certainly,” that voice said, ever resonant, ever omnipresent against the cage of his skull.

Riddle was fucking his thighs in earnest now, dragging little spikes of fire back and forth across Alphard’s cognizance so the muscles in his abdomen tightened down and his legs shook. 

“I can trust you,” Riddle said, and Alphard could hardly hear him any longer over the feeling of his own body hitting its limit. 

Surely he’d die, he thought. Surely this would kill him, but he did not care. It would be a much preferable death than the one he’d suffer if Riddle let him go. This must have been what he did to the muggle girl, Alphard thought. Not such a terrible way to go really. Certainly the one he’d have chosen, as now, he only wished to be more complicit in the act of this assisted suicide. He wished only to have his hands so he could pull Riddle closer, maybe to kiss the other boy. The idea sounded so fancy, almost as romantic as the thought that Riddle could completely steal his body with only a few well turned words. 

“You’d never tell tales on me, would you, Alphard?”

“No,” Alphard promised.

“Never?”

“Never!”

“Swear it.”

“I swear.”

“On your family,” Riddle demanded.

“Yes!”

“On Orion!”

“Yes!” Alphard gasped, and it was thinking of Orion’s face that it finally hit him, the release for all that heat Riddle had been stoking in him since that day he’d slipped his thumb into Alphard’s mouth nearly a month ago. It broke like the breaking of a rope holding some precious package over the edge of a precarious drop. It broke, and he slipped, screaming from the parapets so suddenly that Riddle actually let him go and pulled back, face astonished, letting Alphard have that one moment to reach, grab, hold to him as it all came shuddering out of him, making the muscles of his legs shake and spasm even as he pulled the other boy in. Riddle hissed as their mouths met, hissed and stilled, as though, again, something had happened entirely out of his realm of reasoning, without his say so. But the other boy did not pull away, couldn’t, because he wasn’t long after, and Alphard felt it shudder through him nearly in that instant, a full body spasm that ran along his spine, before it splashed out against Alphard’s stomach, mingling with his own mess.

Riddle stilled then, eyes wide, staring down at their mixed spunk with an unreadable expression. But this time, Alphard held him still, wrenching him down again by the hair so he could press their mouths together just one more time. He tried to think how he’d seen Burgie do this, to formalize how he should turn his head, how he should open his mouth and Riddle seemed to actually get the hint this time. The tip of a tongue flitted along the length of his upper lip, tentatively meeting his own. Riddle was a reserved kisser, nothing like any of the men Alphard had watched kiss Burgie, he thought out every action he took to such careful extremes it left Alphard wanting for more, even as Riddle pulled back, leaving his lips and tongue slightly numb in his wake. 

“You ought to clean up,” the boy told him, turning his head shyly from the whole scene he’d set. “We’re not long for the train now.”

He was right. Right in so many ways. Right about the train just as he’d been right about his lacking romance. But that was fine because their story was more about secrets than love and Alphard would have plenty of chances for romance.

“Yes,” Alphard said almost mechanically as his limbs began to remember what it was to move on their own without another’s bidding to guide them. “Rion will be wondering where I’ve gone.”

“He will,” Riddle agreed.

And the both of them set themselves back to rights in silence before returning to the hubbub of other students below one at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you missed it, the math on this one is: (Boromir voice) one cannot simply _Fuck_ Abraxas Malfoy
> 
>   
> 


End file.
